"Hospital facilities great. Staff terrible!"

I had my first child at NSECH and i was led to tears by staffs conflicting opinions on how to breast feed. As a result my baby had a very slow start. Not to mention the far too frequent staff change over that led to alot of confusion both with the midwives and ourselves.

Staff shortage meant we were left for too long whenever we were waiting for someone.

I had to ask my partner to bring toilet roll from home as i was told by the cleaner there were none left.

After 3 days, leaving the hospital was very slow as the midwives were clueless of my progress no matter how many times i told them my baby was latching well and i was confident to leave.

My baby is now 6 weeks old and i had to return to NSECH as my baby has terrible reflux and was continuosly choking. Once there i was put in a room with a rediculously large cot. I complained that my baby would not feel secure and needed a moses basket which he currently sleeps in. I was told there were none available so instead the nurse put rolled up towels in the cot to make a more secure bed.

My baby would not drink baby Gaviscon in water so i had to use the hospitals electric pump. The pump was no good at all and had a use by date of Jan 2016 written on the side! I took a picture of it.

Responses

I am very sorry that you experienced inconsistencies with your care. Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention, the issues you have raised about staffing, cleanliness, facilities and breast feeding support are of the up most importance and warrant immediate investigation. I would therefore like to start looking into this straight away, with your help. I would like to ask a senior clinical member of the maternity team to conduct a review of exactly what went wrong. Please could you email me directly with your details and I can begin making enquirers straight away, my email is Annie.Laverty@nhct.nhs.uk.

I appreciate that this time is very precious for you and your family, so I am very grateful that you found the time to share your experience with us and for your continued support to help us address these issues.

Despite your disappointing experience I hope your little one is settling in well at home.